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Dual-booting your favorite operating systems is an old practice. It gives you complete access to the underlying hardware, and you can run both operating systems in their full glory. I dual-booted Windows and Ubuntu when I had only one computer with entry-level specs. It wasn't a problem initially, but as I upgraded to better, more powerful hardware and Microsoft hardened its security practices, dual-booting started becoming more cumbersome. Windows updates were another troublesome element that prevented booting into my Linux installation.
Slowly, I became inclined towards virtualization because it didn't inherit all these problems, and kept my machines isolated, untouched, even if something went wrong with my host operating system. I've stopped dual-booting entirely and now use Type 2 hypervisors and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) to create and manage virtual machines.
Dual-booting is not the only solution anymore
Plenty of options
I personally dual-booted operating systems because my hardware was weak for virtualization. You can easily estimate the power of a dual-core i3 processor and 4GB RAM for something as demanding as running one or more virtual machines. I used Windows 7, and at that time, running an Ubuntu machine alongside the base OS was a daunting task. Back then, SSDs were scarce and expensive, and virtualizing hardware meant poor performance on both old and new machines.
It was better to dual-boot because the OS could then access all my computer resources and run properly. But now most laptops and desktops come equipped with at least a SATA SSD (though NVMe is better), and 16GB RAM is mainstream now. All these advancements bring the virtualization performance very close to the native, bare-metal experience.
Isolation and security
OS won’t meddle with your machines
When you boot into another OS on the same drive, it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Windows 11’s hardened security measures, which include Secure Boot, BitLocker, and more, introduce extra complexity in installing and booting another OS like Linux on the same drive. Popular Linux distros offer a signed bootloader and run comfortably alongside Windows. But it doesn’t apply to every Linux distro.
Another headache with dual booting is Windows updates, which can change the EFI boot order and render Linux unbootable until you fix it with a live USB or set the boot order to the correct state. Partitioning is another major problem in dual-boot scenarios, and incorrect EFI or Windows-related partition modification might trigger BitLocker and ask for recovery keys.
I don’t face any such issue while using a Type 2 hypervisor like VMWare or WSL. It gives me the complete liberty to assign as many resources as I can spare, and then use them in the virtual machine. Since it creates a virtual disk (which mimics a real storage disk for the OS), it carries minimal risk of doing anything to the underlying host system.
Virtual machines remain impervious to finicky Windows updates. It's a separate software that shares the hardware resources and allocates them to the OS running inside it. Unless the Windows update has something to do with the software I use or a problem with virtualization elements, it won’t ever break the VM and render it unbootable.
Similarly, no matter how many mistakes I make in a virtual machine, the effects never travel to the host OS, as everything is separate from the core OS files. It gives me the legroom to experiment as much as I want, while keeping the host OS isolated.
Another useful feature of using virtualization software is snapshots. It’s similar to a restore point that you use in Windows, and it's an excellent backup strategy. If your virtual machine cannot boot or the changes you made to it made it unstable, the snapshot can help you go back to an earlier state.
Nominal performance trade-offs
Unless you need the full CPU/GPU power
WSL is a great example of running a virtualized Linux distro without sacrificing performance. I run a Paperless-ngx server on one of my Windows laptops with an Nvidia RTX graphics card. Paperless-ngx doesn't demand too many resources or GPU power, but I combined it with a local LLM and WSL’s GPU pass-through, which helps in this scenario.
With recent WSL 2 updates, tasks that need CUDA cores can efficiently utilize the host system’s GPU power. Although it only shines in AI and ML-related use cases, I still appreciate the automatic configuration and driver support for WSL machines. It’s an official tool that focuses on reducing the performance overhead, which makes Linux VMs more responsive.
GPU pass-through in Type 2 virtualization software is also possible, but trickier than WSL. You must find the correct drivers and go through the initial configuration of permitting the virtual machine to access the GPU. WSL is better if you prefer CLI setups and are an experienced Linux user.
Dual-booting makes sense when you don’t want to sacrifice even an iota of computing power. If you want the system to run GPU-based visual tools and games without hiccups, dual-boot makes sense. In such cases, WSL can’t help you, and you’ll lose a noticeable chunk of power during virtualization.
But most users, including me, use a virtual machine to try new distros, experiment with self-hosted tools, and learn their way around Linux. You can deal with a minimal performance trade-off in some tasks, and unless you need kernel-level access, unrestricted entry to PCIe hardware, WSL, or Type 2 virtualization works wonders.
Virtualization is convenient
Dual-booting loses its charm when you need to run it alongside another OS like Windows on the same drive. The hassle isn’t worth dealing with unless you need native hardware-level performance. WSL and other hypervisors try to balance performance and fidelity while keeping your secondary OS experiments isolated and secure.
